DNA Electronic Presentation
Alyceson Grace Eke :)
Mendel's big deal was heredity.
This Punnett Square justifies Mendel's belief that if a tall pod wants a little one, he's going to have to find someone with that recessive gene or it won't work.
Mendel Experimented on Pea plants
All of Mendel's experiments were on pea plants!
Mendel was Austrian...
He was an Austrian monk
Gregor Mendel
Gregor Mendel was an Austrian monk who discovered dominant and recessive traits (or at least made them known). He used pea plants to conduct experiments between 1856 and 1863. His observations made him realize that the tall pea plants could produce short ones, but because tall pea plants are the dominant trait, well, it would take a short pea plant to give them a chance at having a short baby pea plant. What sucks is how after he dropped dead, they burned his papers at the monastery where he was. He was a monk, you see.
Frederick Griffith
Frederick Griffith was the British scientist who worked with the bacteria that gives you pneumonia, streptococcus pneumoniae, and he figured out that "DNA was the molecule of inheritance," as one website stated. His works with bacteria in mice made us realize that we get our traits from our folks, whether we like them or not. In 1928, he conducted an experiment that killed a few mice by injecting the virus inside of them and even though he used the same method to kill the virus, because it had transformed into other places, it lived and killed the young mouse.
Oswald Avery
Now, Oswald Avery did pretty much what Frederick Griffith did (prove DNA as the molecule of inheritance) and attempted to destroy a virus without taking out the DNA. No matter what, if the DNA still existed, then the transformation process woudl still occur. No kidding, DNA is that powerful. I wouldn't say he did anything of his own, but his findings came 14 years after Griffith, meaning they were in 1932.
Pairings
See? A and T are always together. So are C and G.
A DNA Double Helix?
While this will be under Rosalind, I want you to look at the nitrogen bases. See the pattern?
Bases of DNA
See? AG married twice, TC married once. (Two rings? Get it?!)
Erwin Chargaff
You are only going to remember Erwin because he's the one who created the rule that the bases of DNA (ATCorG) are compatible with only one other base. A is good with T, C is good with G. In his experiments of 1940, Chargaff noticed that A (adenine) had the same levels as T (thymine) and C (cytosine) matched G (guanine). This was what he used to decide that A<3T and C<3G (that's how I remember. A girl like Alyceson is in love with a guy who's name starts with T...uhh...)
Double Helix
This is what Rosalind discovered
Photo 51
This is the picture Rosalind was known for. It does show a little bit of how the DNA is a double helix, with its X shape.
Double Helix
Rosalind Franklin
Rosalind Franklin was the woman who discovered the shape/structure of a DNA: The Double Helix. It was Franklin with a few people who discovered the double helix and that is what we believe in to this day. It wasn't too specific on her years, so I'm going with the 50s. She was also one of the many who made a new, extremely awesome discovery regarding DNA, though she was one of few women.
Maurice Wilkins
Like Oswald Avery, Maurice Wilkins may have contributed to the discovery of his specific part of DNA (in this case the double helix model), they are not given solo credit because they worked underneath the radar because they were second in command or not as committed. In this case, Wilkins was working with Raymond Gosling (who I will call Ryan Gosling one day) and Rosalind Franklin, and the latter was so glorious (being a smart, nonghetto woman and all), she took all of the credit. But they all crystalized the image of the DNA double helix! His time was during the 1950s, if you were wondering...
James Watson
Hey, he was mentioned when I was working on Rosalind. Anyhow, in 1953, James Watson and his sidekick, Francis Crick (see below), discovered the "rungs" of the DNA double helix. While they knew of Chargaff's Rule (A+T, C+G), they finally figured out where to put it and how Hydrogen bonds were the bonds that kept the DNA double helix and its bases intact.
Francis Crick
In 1953, Francis Crick and his teammate, James Watson, pieced together the puzzle of the correct looking DNA model. Technically they did a little discovering, but they mostly played puzzles and got to the point. With Rosalind's double helix, Erwin's A+T, C+G Rule, the newly discovered Hydrogen Bonds, and how things could transform onto and into other bases (See earlier people), Crick and Watson figured out what was missing.